On my own again …

Note to self: don’t leave it so long between runs again. Remarkably, we are 16 days into June and tonight’s outing was only my fourth run this month. Not good.

I know what happens. My legs object, my calves burn up and I really struggle during the first 15-20 minutes or so. Happens every time and it happened again tonight.

I really didn’t enjoy it. It was painful and I had to dig deep at times just to keep going. I considered throwing the towel in before I even got to the first mile. I mean there’s no point in punishing myself unduly, is there? My left ankle also started to twinge but a couple of stretches seemed to sort that out.

I thought I’d carry on. I hoped it’d get easier, it usually does … and it did tonight.

Maybe my head wasn’t really in it either. I hadn’t run on my own since 21st May, every run since then was either a race or with the club, so it possibly took a bit getting used to again.

I only intended to go out to do 5k or 3.1 miles, which I did, and each mile was faster than the one preceeding it, negative splits all the way. That was a huge surprise given how I started …. 11:57 for the first mile, then 11:31 before finishing with a strong 10:33.

All that shows is that it took a while for my legs to settle back into running, but once they did the old form returned.

Now that I’ve hopefully shaken the rustiness out of my legs it’s up to me to keep going. I’ve got the Lisburn 10k next week and hope to give a good account of myself at it so it’s imperative I get out a few more times before then.

As an aside, I gave the Spotify Running app a wee go tonight. It gives you a playlist based on your tempo (170 steps per minute in my case) … let’s just say I was presented with some ‘interesting’ choices! I’ll use it again, though.